The battle for women’s choice began in Texas, a state that during the 1960’s outlawed any type of abortion unless a doctor determined that the mother’s life was in danger. Norma McCorvey, better known under her legal pseudonym Jane Roe, an unmarried and pregnant woman, filed a law suit against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, contesting the statue on the grounds that it violated the guarantee of personal liberty and the right to privacy, both of which are implicitly guaranteed in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The decision obtained in the 1973 Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, which successfully legalized abortion nationwide, well-fits the criteria for explaining the extensive, abrupt, and decreasing crime rate throughout the 1990’s.
After 1991, the United States experienced the steepest drop in murder rates since the end of Prohibition in 1933. The murder had fallen by nearly 40 percent, and property crime and violent crime both decreased by nearly 30 percent as well. According to the well-known Donohue Levitt Theory, such significant decrease in crime rate is due to the legalization of abortion nearly eighteen years early. As a matter of fact, the five states that allowed abortion in 1970, New York, the first state to legalize abortion on demand through the 24th week of pregnancy, Hawaii, which legalized abortion through 20 weeks for residents of that state, California, which stated the law banning abortion was unconstitutional, Alaska, and Washington, all experienced declines in crime rate earlier than the rest of the nation, which mandated abortion in 1973 with the passing of Roe v. Wade.
While some argue that the increasing use of incarceration, growth in the number of police, improved policing strategies, declines in the crack cocaine trade, the strong economy, and increased expenditures on security guards and alarms all contribute to the decreasing crime rate in America, none of these factors, however, accommodate for the sheer magnitude of the decline, besides the legalization of abortion nationwide. In 1980, seven years after Roe v. Wade, over 1.6 million abortions were performed annually, the near equivalent to one abortion for every two live births in the United States. As shown in the graph below, the total number of documented abortions rose sharply in the wake of Roe v. Wade, rising from just under 750,000 in 1973 to 1.6 million in 1980.
The evidence on this graph indicates that
after abortion was legalized, the number of abortions increased, which is
logical. Around the time of Roe vs. Wade, the number of abortions sparked
especially. In 1973, there were only 750,000 documented abortions. This number
more than doubled by 1980 when documented abortions reached over 1.6 million.
The price of getting an abortion also significantly decreased after Roe vs. Wade and the legalization. Before Roe vs. Wade, an illegal abortion could be up to $500. Within thirteen years of the decision, the cost plummeted to as little as $80. According to John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, authors of The Quarterly Journal of Economics: The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, “the most convincing evidence that legalization increased abortion comes from Michael [1999].” From 1965 to 1970, low maternal education demonstrated a significant direct link to the number of unwanted births. This was before abortion was legalized. So, due to this link, mothers were being forced to most likely keep and raise a child they weren’t stable enough to successfully raise, either mentally stable, financially, etc., since abortion was not a legal, affordable, or safe option. Then, in 1976, three years after abortion became legal in America, the Hyde Amendment was passed as part of the Department of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriation Act of 1976. The Hyde Amendment stated that no abortion could be funded by federal funds unless the abortion was necessary for the mother’s health. It is impossible to count or explain the number of women who were harmed by this. “Before Hyde, one-third of all abortions were Medicaid funded: 294,000 women per year”, 294,000 women whose babies otherwise were likely to do society a disfavor twenty years after they were born. Not because of who raised them, but because of the conditions they were likely to be raised in. Without the state funding, women who had unwanted pregnancies were forced to either keep the baby, or use money they desperately needed for food, rent, or clothing to have the abortion. Statistics provided by Donohue and Levitt note that “the marginal children who were not born as a result of abortion legalization would have systematically been born into less favorable circumstances if the pregnancies had not been terminated: they would have been 60 percent more likely to live in a single parent household, 50 percent more likely to live in poverty, 45 percent more likely to be in a household collecting welfare, and 40 percent more likely to die during the first year of life.”Although unfortunate, it is a proven fact that being surrounded by any of these conditions in a person’s childhood automatically increases their chances of becoming a future criminal. Unintended pregnancies are associated with poorer prenatal care, greater smoking and drinking during pregnancy, and lower birthrates. As a result, the living circumstances of a child who was only born because their mother could not have an abortion are considerably damaged compared to those children who were wanted at the time of conception. According to numerous studies, roughly half of the crimes committed in the United States are one y individuals born prior to the legalization of abortion. As time continues forward, and such older groups surpass their criminal peak, they will be replaced by younger offenders, all of whom were born after the legalization of abortion. Because of this, the Donohue Levitt hypothesis predicts the crime rates will continue to fall, and when a steady state is reached approximately twenty years from now, the impact of Roe v. Wade will roughly double, having legalized abortion account for persistent declines of nearly 1 percent per year throughout the next twenty years. |
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